The last week of October I spent in Oklahoma tracking down West Kentucky CSA veterans burial locations, obituaries, etc. At the Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center I was first told before arriving that they new nothing of any applications for their Confederate Home, even though I told them that one of the individuals I was researching had mentioned in his pension file that he had filled out an application for the Home. Then another lady told me they had a Ledger that included residents of the Home. On my day spent at the Research Center I discovered that the Ledger included mostly financial information with about three years listing of residents dying at the home and some pertinent information. The Ledger did not include the few that I knew had been at the home and were buried in that section of the cemetery at Ardmore. Another individual working at the Research Center told me that the original records from the Home were placed out at the curb/street and the records went to the dump. The old Oklahoma Confederate Home is now being used my modern veterans.

As a professionally trained historian and US military veteran myself I don't understand how the different States (including Kentucky) destroy their original military type records, such as (my State) Kentucky destroying the original muster rolls for the War of 1812 and Mexican War in the latter 19th century. But yet original financial records were kept. History is all about people and their stories and just with numbers alone it does not come alive.

Some 20 years ago or so some of us within the SCV had been wanting the SCV to build a world class research facility at Elm Springs to preserve the disappearing records and provide a one stop facility to research the War. This follows in the aim of the UCV and UDC in their directives from 100 years ago in collecting and providing the actual documentation to refute what was being blamed on the South.